::'J -' 4, ",,^' , - L '" '" ':f r;;: t.\ '#) . . , ,$ it:. :' , -'^',:':( to" ,',,\ /ð 1,t" \> -]} - l:',, ,:,' ' ' 2 1' '\_ " '< ' ,:,- , : , ', ... ., ' <'i" .....%.. , ", i . , ; . A'" '. ,. \. "l ' j " :', lY ;k$ ,,' /':,./( 1 } ,Jjt ;" JjJ. if", J Q ' \. :"",.., ""':: :,. '" ,'..' .. " """"'" ,. Þ6. "She looks like that woma1 I was telling you about -that Mrs Palley who has the parrot she's afraid of." on the Riviera. One especially at- tracted him-Charlie Johnson's J azz- Boys, or something of the sort. "And so," said Mr. Duncan, "I wanted to come back and meet you all-the brothers and sisters of Charlie Johnson's J azz- Boys." Brown Brotlters C HAMBERLAIN BROWN probably has the biggest acquaintance of anyone on Broadway, unless it's his brother Lyman. The two Browns know every actor in town, and most of the opera singers and prizefighters also. Their business is placing actors in parts. If an actor gets a job through. them he pays a certain commission and, natur- ally, it behooves them to keep in close touch with the situation. They are a godsend to managers. If a difficult play comes along, the Browns must know where the available actors best fitted to the rôles can be found. To be thus ready at all times the brothers keep many and enormous scrapbooks, the greatest collection of theatrical clip- pings in the world. The books occupy most of the space in two large rooms at the agents' offices in Forty-fifth Street. E very actor of any consequence has a book to himself, some of them more. Jeritza and Jack Dempsey have the most, four each. The Browns don't let people borrow the scrapbooks any more. An opera singer took hers out once and was so pleased with it that she kept it. A play needs a red-headed actor, say. The management queries the Browns. They refer to a cross-index of their scrapbooks. This tells them that James Cagney is in Harrisburg, Allen Bunce in South Norwalk, and Charles Bick- ford in Skowhegan. The agents offer the jobs to these men. If none are available they have plenty more listed. They have inexhaustible lists of special types-juveniles, all kinds of charac- ter .actors, German-speaking players, actors who can play this or that kind of musical instrument, six-foot men, old people, children of all ages, and so on. The Browns do their own clipping of newspapers.. They like to. They have liked clipping newspapers ever since they were children, and it is this that led them into their present business. 13 I As youngsters in Boston they began cutting out pictures and items about actors and pasting them into books. As he grew up, Chamberlain became inter- ested in the theatre, acting part of the tIme, hanging around stages regardless, if he was unemployed. He and his brother kept up the scrapbooks, never- theless. Chamberlain found he had constructive ideas about the stage. Suggestions he volunteered to directors and producers were adopted. This led him to believe that the scrapbooks had commercial possibilities. He and his brother opened up as casting agents, and were successful. During the days in Boston, when Chamberlain was eight or nine, he met R. F. Outcault, the cartoonist. He had bobbed hair, wore a wide collar, and looked pretty cute. Outcault asked him to pose. The casual drawing made then was the origin of the famous comics, "Buster Brown." Tige, the bulldog, was born the same day, but out of Outcault's imagination. He just added him to the picture of Chamberlain Brown as an impulse. There never was an original. When not clipping, or at other of- fice work, the Browns spend much of their time exploring out-of-the-way theatres for talent. They discovered Ben-Ami this way, and Judith Ander- son, William Gaxton, Edna May Oliver, and many others. They live together, have a Pekinese apiece, and look much alike. At noon they can usually be found at Sardi's Restaurant, sitting under the framed caricature of Chamberlain. Civic Force R AREL Y -oh, so rarely! -do we receive concrete evidence of our influence in the community, although naturally we are vaguely aware that ours is a great power. A specific and an impressive instance is now reported, however. It follows our mention a few weeks since of a conductor on the Eighth Street line who amuses himself with a toy mouse, which he leaves in the aisle of his car to frighten women passengers. A friend of ours now ad- vises that he was going up in one of the elevators at the Plaza last Monday when he saw a mouse on the floor. He turned it over with his toe and saw it was made of rubber. Glancing up at the operator, he caught him grinning widely . "Your mouse?" he inquired. "Yeah," said the operator. "1 got the idea out of THE NEW '-'-ORKER." -THE NEW YORKERS